Guild Wars 2

Did you even run through fractals 1-50? Let’s work with your analogy. Suppose they included Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and MGM studios. Then they made the walk way into the Magic Kingdom twice as long to walk up to and called it Magic Kingdom II.

I would like to hear what’s ‘new’ about the new fractals from your experience. I can freely admit that there might be things I’ve overlooked as something new in the fractal game experience that didn’t exist in the pre-update fractals experience that i’ve overlooked.

Atlas.4509:

captainteemo.6537:

I don’t think that the ability to continue playing a part of the game that was part of the core experience should be penalized just because of a revamp that really wasn’t new content.

Nothing is stopping you from continuing to play the existing 1-50 fractal content. Levels 51+ are HoT content, which you can technically still access, albeit with greater difficulty, but the fact that you are even able to do so seems generous to me.

As for the ascended salvage kit, the only purpose that serves is to provide mats for the Legendary pre cursor crafting which is also HoT only content, so there is no need for f2p players to have access to it.

There’s nothing new about fractal 51-100 aside from the numbers. The agony ticks are higher, but it’s still the same tune. Even the instabilities are from previous instabilities, just moved around. Unless you consider more HP new content?

I was talking about ascended salvaging. I was just referring to infusion extraction to upgrade my agony resistance.

If you pay for a season’s pass at Disneyland and suddenly they told you that you can stand in the line, but you can’t ride the rides until you ‘upgrade’ your pass because they decided to let people go around twice. That seems hardly fair. I think if you’re familiar with fractal content you can see right away this is hardly ‘new’ content. I guess they’re very generous that they even allow me to log into the game since I only paid for the original.

Linken.6345:

Your saying it was impossible for you to save 5 bucks a month? thats half a big mac meal in my country

Yes I can buy it if I needed or wanted to. I just vote ‘no’ with my money because I don’t agree with a lot of the decisions moving forward. If people like the direction things are going then it’s fine for them to buy it. Just because I’m an older core player doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to voice my concerns.

crisisavatar.9247:

You have lost nothing, if you want to do new pay for the development of those new things so that you may use them. You’ve gotten far more than your 10-60 bucks worth of content as it is.

Are you saying these fractals are new? What does getting your value’s worth out of your purchase have to do with purchasing new content? Maybe I own a 2000 Acura and it’s been good value and served me well. I’m not committed to buying a new one if the old one still works just because it has some new features.

As a core player, I was able to play from fractals 1 to 50 (max level at the time) with friends.

Yes, the added legendary back item. I didn’t need it before, and it’s a luxuary for people who paid for the new content. That’s FINE.

They haven’t added anything substantially new to fractals. Yet by not paying for HoT, I can’t enjoy the content I used to before (1 to Max) with friends. That’s more of the issue.

Xbon.9086:

captainteemo.6537:

I was looking to extra my old infusion out of my back piece (a +10) just so I can upgrade it to progress further. I’m confused why the ability to salvage ascended items is available to all players, but the “Infusion Extraction Device” sold for 20s needs to be positioned on the little island only available to HoT players?

I suppose as a non-HoT player I have access to the gem store upgrade extractor. But, it seems heavily biased the new (yet generally still old fractals with just higher scaling and a re balancing of instabilities) fractals become so difficult for old players, and HoT paid players get all the nice new advantages to make life a lot easier for them to progress.

seems perfectly normal… you’ve had 3 years to save $50 somewhere in the likelyhood that there’d be an expansion… a lot of people with core game now are just f2p nowadays, giving them the entire experience would sort of kill the point, if you’re not f2p you can still trade your gold to gems to get an upg extractor; or get hot once, and only pay 24s each time.

That’s the justification? Because 3 years have passed, we should have saved to pay for an expansion? Core gamers are equivalent to free to play gamers, regardless when they started or the conditions surrounding when they started? I’m more questioning the general philosophy behind this decision.

Yes, I’m aware as a core gamer I can trade gold to gems at a great rate to pay for the upgrade extractor. I suppose I’m just envious because these new gaming experiences come behind a pay wall.

New masteries, new map, for people who paid. I get it, I don’t mind and they deserve it for paying.I don’t think that the ability to continue playing a part of the game that was part of the core experience should be penalized just because of a revamp that really wasn’t new content.

Yes, those vendors are new and the extractor is new. Yes the masteries are new as well, as is the legendary back piece.

Are the fractals new? Does redistributing fractals around and instabilities and raising the ‘level’ cap of fractals count as new enough content that a ‘dirty core player that’s no better than a free to play player’ doesn’t deserve some reasonable avenue to progress just to continue playing what he paid for originally?

I don’t need the masteries to progress, unless they’re MAKING me use them to progress (hinting that if I don’t buy, I can’t play).

I’m glad everyone has all new content that they enjoy. They’ve done good things, but the this whole money grabbing approach just doesn’t sit well with everyone. It isn’t about if the item cost $1 or $100.

Maybe I was okay with my old $13.50 for a drug I needed, but to repackage it so I need to pay $750 a tablet instead for basically the same thing, most people would cry foul.

I was looking to extra my old infusion out of my back piece (a +10) just so I can upgrade it to progress further. I’m confused why the ability to salvage ascended items is available to all players, but the “Infusion Extraction Device” sold for 20s needs to be positioned on the little island only available to HoT players?

I suppose as a non-HoT player I have access to the gem store upgrade extractor. But, it seems heavily biased the new (yet generally still old fractals with just higher scaling and a re balancing of instabilities) fractals become so difficult for old players, and HoT paid players get all the nice new advantages to make life a lot easier for them to progress.

I like having the new achievements to work towards.
I like having more levels to work towards, and fixing the fractal levels that were broken.
I like being able to buy my fractal skins using Pristine relics.

I don’t like how cheap the skins are. I had over 700 Pristine relics saved, and at the cost of 20 Pristines, it just made the skins lose that prestige of earning them. They just cheapened the image of fractal skins overnight. That’s terribly disappointing. Especially since they mentioned they wanted to preserve that.

Since I mainly login, do dailies and do fractals. It seems like I’ve been losing gold recently. With the new terrible rewards (You only get about 1g from Fractals 51+ tier) and plus random RNG from those boxes which you purchase the keys to open.

Congrats to all the HoT owners. Lots of obvious advantages for the people who paid.

Ascended Salvaging

Dark Energy and Stabilizing Matrices are new materials needed for crafting legendary gear. These materials are obtained by salvaging ascended gear.
Ascended gear can only be salvaged using an ascended salvage tool. Ascended salvage tools can only be used to salvage ascended gear.
Ascended salvage tools can be purchased from the Mistlock Observatory for gold and fractal relics or from laurel vendors for gold and laurels.

This really sucks. They bait us into thinking we’re getting all rewarded for running more fractals and saving up those rings. It’s like we were running a bill this whole time. Log back in to look at the hundreds of rings we have saved. It feels like you were just handed the bill for your company Christmas party.

Do you at least get any +AR infusions that were in the rings?

Unranked used to be decent. People who knew pvp but without the pressures of ranked. Now every new person is joining unranked and it’s making me feel totally frustrated. It’s not the place to teach people the basics of how points are scored and where to fight…

I don’t understand the rational for unranked now. It’s just the default new spot?

It’s free to play the game, you just need to buy the account upgrades to fully unlock everything. So, it’s Free to Play the game… Why don’t they just say it straight forward and skip overall all the subterfuge with the wording? This isn’t Buy to Play anymore. The core principles and idea behind b2p is gone. You’re just not entitled to account upgrades… with out paying real money…

Value for your money is an entirely different discussion. At least Anet has all the pre-order money before they let people know they were changing their buy to play model.

Seriously? They want you to basically buy the game twice? I thought they were going to be fair about this. This is seriously changing my mind. Supporting the game is fine, but they basically want to gouge you for more money. If i give up beta access can I just have a price for a normal upgrade on my current ‘core game’?

I was riding the metro today and as everyone was leaving work I noticed that the meta was for most people standing on the escalators stood to the right and people who wanted to move quicker walked on the left. The are always individuals who believe it is thier right to stand on the left. Maybe they want diversity? But forcing others to put up with it seems pretty selfish. They could probably find another escalator, or perhaps the stairs?

90% of players quote numbers that they heard before and believe it. Only 5% bother to look it up. I totally made those up. But, to answer the question take a look at the actual numbers. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/31wbip/ascended_vs_exotic_gear_comparison_spreedsheet/

Aomine.5012:

When you find out that shield actually gives mesmer a full block on a short cool down, I think most pvp people will have a change of opinion right after lol.
If mesmer’s shield turn out to be useful, it is acually a plus because there’re so many well-designed shield out there, just that not many classes benefit from the shield. (So far probably only engi will take shield)

Remember they actually had a clip of the mesmer using the shield like a bomb. (Think of Orianna Command : shock wave) which could be cool if it does decent damage, but we already have curtain (why is the reflect still so bad, doesn’t a curtain hang? Not rise from the ground?). They’re hinting that the other skill is a phantasm because that’s typically the way mesmer weapons work. I wonder what your expression will be when you find out we have another phantasmal defender.

Wooden potatoes also confirmed that some classes will only receive
an off hand.

serenke.4806:

Can we not have this “buy skins for X relics” mechanic? Thanks.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution to that. If you have a recommendation that isn’t entirely bound to rng? How do you validate the time and effort people put into fractals while keeping items prestigious and uncommon relative to the general masses?

As an addition to the recommendations about salvaging Ascended items. What if they give dark matter? People who run dungeons are basically pushed to gear in Ascended. Why not make it so items like rings at least assist in thier goals to progress in fractals?

I’m a little surprised a report went in but a new discussion thread was never really created? Though since there’s a back log of hot topics I’m sure there was plenty to provide them.

@Rising Dusk. Maybe a brief summary of what was addressed?

@Slacker. Great that you posted this, but I would like to add my opinion and comments as well.

1) I think ‘Pug Killers’ are fine, in the sense that FoTM are meant to be challenging and co-ordinated. To assist a group into transitioning to that level, perhaps lower tiers would act as a training ground with either additional help or reduced damage.

2) I’ve also heard the rumors about the secret Fractal weapon skin boxes and I would also like to see some additional avenues for obtaining the desired skins. Your idea of a collection is great! It goes in line with the system that anet has been currently developing and I would like to suggest a NEW collection (again starting everyone off on the same foot) where if you complete a fractals 30-50 (every single one) then that would reward you with either a fractal skin box, or a token that would eventually allow you to forge the skin of your choosing. Currently most people and I suspect most new people rising in the ranks of fractals skip the often difficult instabilities. They haven’t gone through the adventures/pains of the people who went through the ‘Fractured’ update and had to challenge themselves going through all or at least most of the instabilities. This is one way to bring those often unvisited instabilities back and to reward people who challenge themselves through all of them.

I also hinted towards another possible token system. Not that I desire more tokens but, if there was a collection method mixed in with the current RNG system then perhaps there would be another way that wouldn’t break the current system. If players could say salvage a) ascended rings for a mat, b) combine it with a weapon frame purchased using relics or pristine relics (100 pristine sounds fine, I’m even fine with 250 since I have more than enough and I’m sure others do as well) c) Shards and d) something else (4 part mystic forge recipe) which could be something anet introduces that controls the rate in which people can forge skins to not flood the market.

3) A training system would take away resources to develop other content. I would rather they just tune lower levels and move on. I would be nice if they had more of a tutorial session for fractal beginners, but since there are a lot of tutorial videos out there I’m sure we’ll be fine.

4) Rings… should be addressed. Vendoring for 1g seems a little too much. Even salvaging for shards would be preferable right now to vendoring.

5) Minis, yes give us these minis. Though if they were announced with the next (hopefully soon) Fractals update that would be fine as well.

I certainly hope fractals and dungeons get more developer time. The skins still need to be prestigious and difficult to aquire, but not so much that we (maybe that’s just me) sit here thinking it will never happen.

While CDI being the Collaborative Development Initiative is what we hope for, I can understand reserving the term as to not confuse community initiatives with something directly related to the developers.

The decision to keep the dungeon running community happy is an internal matter and for now we can only hope that people like Gaile and our new forum representative can communicate our desires to the team over there.

But, if we want to see changes we’ll still need a new topic with some more structure to outline our goals. Either using the CDI framework or drawing from your own corporate experiences to start?

I’m assuming the representative is not just a figurehead? I’ve been impressed by the amount of development that’s been taken away from the community feedback and I have high hopes we can at least bring some light back into dungeons and instances.

Hi, just wanted to revisit this idea. Maybe you can setup a framework for us to provide structured opinions and actionable requests that you can bring back to the anet tab. Open discussion is fine, but with out structure it won’t get very far.

My first guild in this game was pretty much the same experience. But, the bottom line is you volunteer your time in this game. If a guild helps you, then spend time with them. If you enjoy that guild then spend more time with them. Your time is another currency that a guild farms in this game.

Guilds that provide their members with help and support to fulfill each person’s individual needs (it can be in game goals or just social needs) won’t need to enforce representation.

Try turning off your guild tag and see how many invites you get.

Is this thread meant for suggestions now or comments? Or is the representative planning on opening up a new one with specific goals and guidelines stated.

I think your idea has merit. We just need to admit that a perfect solution isn’t really likely to happen.

But, this point system addresses one of the major issues, which is it protects people who have invested more time in the dungeon.

a) If everyone stays in the dungeon and all players have equal points, then it is no better nor worse than the current system.
b) If everyone leaves leaving the original party leader and perhaps an additional friend, they still retain power over the group. They put in the most time and progressed the furthest so that’s fair. It doesn’t protect the people joining however and this might need to be addressed. There might need to be a catch system where new people joining can not be immediately kicked (timer?). Again this can not solve all possibly situations, but we’re trying to move towards a system that can.
c) To have more control, perhaps ‘bonus’ points should be awarded to an instance creator. Giving the party ‘leader’ the right to veto. This offers some measure of control and promotes people to create their own groups for more control. The downside is that this might create a situation where a group of possibly 2 party members holds power over the rest. Depends on the amount of ‘bonus’ points awarded?

Also, the current way that kicking is implemented seems annoying to players. Promoting people to kick rather than look at the information presented. A better warning and confirmation/action announcement might help solve that. Specifically a cancel or abstain button might be worth implementing.

I think this issue should be brought up with the new fractal and dungeon forum rep and possibly we can talk about refining the system to make it work.

The main flaw so far that I can see is if 3 or 4 players worked together to invite someone else to run and decided to kick them towards the end to gift it to a guildmate or a friend. However, this might always be the risk with pugging. Aside from a reporting system with penalties, I’m not sure how else to prevent such a setup.

But, I support this idea and at least I think it is no worse than the present system.

Congrats! Looking forward to some positive changes.

No, they shouldn’t be on the trading post. But, running with relatively new players, people with fractal levels in the 30s and seeing them with skins I’ve been after for nearly 2 years hurt… Can I trade in my stack of 500 pristine relics? I wish gale or someone would take a look at our position.

edit. phone autocorrected.

Returning player here. I’m sorry OP, sometimes you need to work to get there. I don’t know what you think you’re missing from fractal 50s instead of fractal 49s. You can do that content just fine, and if you play that consistently you’ll get Ascended armour just from drops. Even the most unlucky friend has half a character filled with Ascended armour straight from drops. I managed to equip 3 tools with various Ascended shoulders, boots, gloves from fractal drops. You might not like the stat choices, but if you only want to play from drops then that’s all you have to work with. Defenders chests can give you Knights and all chests have Celestial. Enough for you to drop ar in to play your desired fractal 50.

Again you don’t need a full set to have enough ar to do it., but if you expect to just hit 80 and to grind fractals straight to 50 then that’s a little bit unreasonable without working on some of your gear.

Peter.9236:

So yep, I’ve gone with a sylvari elementalist, it’s awesome but very squishy, is it a bad idea to just go for items proving power/precision/ferocity? It does decent damage but I tend to die fast if i try a dungeon and get shot at. If it is a bad idea, what mix should I aim for of other attributes?

I’m using arcane brilliance as healing, but the cooldown is a little long, are any others better and more widely used?
I’ve also had arcane wave equipped since a low level, it seems ok but I’m not sure if it’s useful for later levels (with it only being 1 skill point and all), so should I keep it or switch to mist form or something? The other three are glyph of storms, frost bow (or signet of air if I’m running somewhere) and fire sword, they seem useful for dealing a lot of damage on bosses.

Elementalists are still very good for dungeon running groups. Yes, they are very squishy and the problem with that and the full zerker meta is that your survival is some what tied to your party’s ability to kill fast.

Your utilities are good choices, and as other people have mentioned you should be prepared to swap them out depending on the situation. What will help you more than anything else is really learning the dungeon you want to run and the encounters.

Tips. 1) Glyph of Storms in Earth attunement blinds the area and with the exception of dredge is pretty good at helping reduce attack damage when your group is stacked.
2) if you’re having trouble yourself surviving feel free to swap in something to keep yourself up until you learn the encounters well and know when to dodge/reflect. Especially if you’re skipping/running.
3) As an ele, you should start learning about combo fields. (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo) Specifically how to blast might for increased dps, and how to blast your water fields for healing. The burst heal might be enough to keep you alive. Don’t waste arcane wave as just a single heal.
4) You can consider a different trait setup until you get used to the dungeons.

After a short break from playing gw2 and coming back to it from other MMOs. You guys seriously don’t know what it means for an MMO to be grindy. Guildwars2 has it pretty good. If you’re upset, go try out other mmos and see for yourself.

Thanks for the info about the tonic. I’ll just move this tonic over here beside my stack of experimental rifles…

Who really makes these random decisions for changes such as locking transformations suddenly in dungeons and fractals so we can’t change our utilities, while not allowing us to use our own hard earned tonics?

Side note. Why was the wall at the AC end boss changed so you can’t hide behind it, but the open pillar where people can safely range wasn’t changed? Is the message supposed to be high risk high reward isn’t what they want to promote?

There have been countless changes that come out of the blue and they don’t seem to bring value to the game?

I really am confused behind these decisions recently. The intention isn’t to just QQ.

GRRRRRR just want to vent. Quickly wanted to do something else and I forgot about the default while i was trying to sell things off. I mean I’m not losing a ton of gold, but just the frustration of having done it.

Just…FRUSTRATING.

okay, back to the game…

This… Caused me to swear briefly. I wasn’t paying attention and sold stuff expecting the default to lowest sell listing. Maybe we should have a customizable default view? I guess more work. My vote is for highest sell listing.

First I wanted to say it’s great you’ve talked to the community so often and in such a straightforward fashion.

I don’t know if my question has been asked before, the posts have become quite long and if someone has an answer that would be great.

After the transition to the new wardrobe, Several items have become a burdern to player inventories such as armors bought with karma and even armor bought with gold. Does it seem detrimental if these items could be salvaged?

1) Gold cost of buying cultural armor and even armor skins from each order doesn’t seem like it would offset the possible ‘ecto’ gain of salvaging. Would this be likely to happen in the near future?

2) If karma armor could be salvaged only to remove upgrades added to the armor (and possibly not runes that came with such an armor) be possible in the future? Or is it mainly the fear of possible unknown exploits that’s keeping this from being implemented?

Thank you. T__________T This feeling, I don’t know how to describe it….

I’m still in awe at see these changes. I never expected this.

This sounds amazing so far. It just needs to work like the down state thief. It still can be dodged by someone skilled enough, yeah a lot less troubling when they’re running up the stairs in spirit watch with the orb.

wow, hearing back about this is great news. fingers crossed.

Seeing that there were some positive changes based on the feed back from the community really helps.

Maybe they’ll finally allow us to salvage/mystic forge WvW and PvE (Whisper/Priory/Vigil) armor to get stuff back…

This idea sounds terrible. Give us a blast finish at least that is semi useful. Even if you copy tons of boons for a short period of time, then having your utility go on cool down. I would rather stripe boons off the enemy instead of matching their boons.

As the most hated light armor class by Anet. Not like we can out heal eles and necros.

The community lead must be reading the wrong forums. Mesmer community wants something useful? blast finish on greatsword? let’s nerf ileap instead.

I think they must feed off our broken dreams…

It’s going to try to push us to use useless traits they introduced before. As soon as we found one worth using, they turned around an nerfed it pretty quickly last time.

We’re kind of a hated class. These notes are so depressing.

Mimic is going to be so worthless, using a utility skill for probably a short duration of lots of boons and then waiting on cool downs?

Someone is sitting down over there thinking about how to make mesmers cry each patch.

Why is this another huge gold sink? 300g? Why not make it something like 3000 badges of honor? At least you know someone worked to earn their tag, more than had extra gold to buy it.

Unless they feel WvW players are too rich as it is.

I’m not surprised, everyone will like different things but they basically look like rocks with some added lighting. I tried investing in skins I personally like and wouldn’t mind if I was stuck with. These new skins would make me feel bad if I was stuck with them.

Teemo was helped by Vayne lol XD

She did click on the green star. That wasn’t the issue.

Actually thanks to the person who posted about emptying the trading post. She had a load of dyes sitting in there and emptying it out suddenly unlocked the story both the first episode and allowed her to ‘play’ the second one.

So the issue is resolved.

Chase.8415:

You have 2 weeks or more to log on for 30 seconds to unlock an episode.

If you can’t even do that, then yes you have the option of buying the story and unlocking it. But keep in mind your friends can take you into the story instance for free, you just wont get any rewards.

This didn’t work. GF logged in a few times during the week. Did dailies and changed skins. Logging in today the story is locked for her, and the 1st season 2 story needs to be bought for 200 gems. Cycling through every level 80 character, we couldn’t find an option to play the 1st part of season 2 without paying.

We thought based on the previous wording that just logging into the game, doing your dailies, would unlock the living story for you to play at a later date. However, since girl friend was waiting for a longer period of free time to play she didn’t actually play through the story and just logged in for dailies and to change character looks.

After the patch today, it seems if you haven’t started playing the previous story it requires you to buy it for 200 gems.

I seriously thought just logging into the game during the week of the living story would allow you to unlock this?

She checked through all her level 80 characters to see if any of them have access to the previous story, and they don’t. She needs to buy it.

Is this intended?

The in game description says to soul bind it. Doesn’t that mean putting it on? Even in PvP I purchased the t3 armor. It cost both gold and glory to buy.

I noticed this a while ago, but I forgot to post until now. Before phasing out glory, we had the chance to buy cultural armor from the vendors. I purchased Asura Cultural Tier 3 Light armor. Technically I spent gold (+glory) on it, and I’m wearing it so it’s soul bound. But, I don’t have an achievement for it.

It would be nice to see this fixed.

Bump for interest. I want to know if I should be untraiting my warden for this fight.

Think about the game mode you want to spend most of your time in. My friend started with her necro, and since she’s not interested in PvP content, it made her really sad and she re-rolled a warrior for her PvE needs.

As stated above, if you don’t to feel anxious about every new patch because you don’t know how much further they can break your class or test your patience, then pretty much you should avoid A.I. dependent classes like Mesmers.